Local Editor

Saudi Arabia has begun selling off major portions of its wealth fund’s European stocks amid the rising cost of its intervention in Yemen and falling oil prices, Sputnik News said on Tuesday. 

Saudi Arabia has sold off significant volumes of European stocks in the midst of its invasion into Yemen and sliding oil prices, a study released by JP Morgan revealed, Sputnik News said. 

Saudi Arabia has sold off $1.2 billion of its $9.2 billion holdings in European equities since May, Reuters reported. Reuters previously estimated that Saudi Arabia would spend $175 million per month for bombings and $500 million for a ground incursion.

Such an estimate would mean that Saudi Arabia has spent around $1.2 billion on bombings so far, the same sum sold off since May, not including the cost of the ground invasion. It is possible that the ell-off is linked to the Yemen incursion as it was an unplanned expense for Saudi Arabia, unlike its oil price projections and other expenditures including arming Syrian militants.

The United Arab Emirates [UAE], another participant in the Yemen conflict, has sold off $300 million of its $3.6 billion holding. The sell-offs could also be linked to falling oil prices, as oil-producing Norway has sold off around 2 percent of its own wealth fund’s European equities, considerably less than Saudi Arabia in relative terms.

A Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States has been carrying out a military aggression on Yemen by launching airstrikes against the country since March 26.

The US-led Saudi aggression began in a bid to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to the country’s fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

The ’civilian’ death toll in Yemen has risen to more than 2,300 with more than 4,000 other civilians wounded in the fighting in the country that has raged for more than a year now, according to the UN recently last month [September]. Yet, other organizations put the death toll at much higher.